Johnson at odds with Holt & Stanton in June of 1865

[John E.]

According to the diary of Mary Henry (daughter of Joseph Henry - famous scientist & first Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution), Andrew Johnson was at odds with Holt and Stanton way before the controversy stemming from Mary Surratt's reprieve letter.


June 1st , 1865

Mr. Peace last night said President Johnson did not approve of the course persued in the trial of the Assassins. Was greatly displeased at Holt & Stanton who he said had deceived him in regard to the evidence concerning the participation of Jeff Davis in the murder and caused him to issue prematurely the proclamation setting a price upon his head.

"The Civil War Out My Window" is a fascinating read by the way. Unfortunately, she didn't mention attending the trial.
I had never seen this before and found it very interesting.

[Thomas Thorne]

Fascinating tidbit. If true,it makes Johnson's subsequent statements about being deceived by Holt about the mercy recommendation by the Commission more untenable.

If Johnson felt deceived by Holt or Stanton,it strikes me as extraordinary he would not seek out other opinions about the trial and verdicts before confirming the sentences. If he was telling people as early as May 31 he did not trust the Holt /Stanton version,he was already receiving information unfiltered by them. If I were president and my busy schedule prevented me from getting any information about the first part of the trial from anyone except Holt and the press, and the press reports gave me profound unease about the validity of the General Conspiracy, you can be sure I would have arranged for someone to get me information independent of Holt's version of events.

The presidency is a powerful office and there would have been people willing to act as Johnson's agents.

And please tell me what precisely what did Johnson and Holt talk about for 3 hrs when Johnson signed the death warrants. it certainly was not the effect George Atzerodt's execution would have on Prussian-American relations. You can be sure Andrew Johnson wanted to be convinced that Mrs Surratt should hang. After all Johnson had reduced the difficulty of the Civil War to the fact that women were not being executed. With this presidential attitude, there would have been no need for Holt to deceive him. In this instance there would have been a meeting of minds of Holt,the stern public moralist prosecutor and the vindictive chief magistrate against rebels and the silly chivalrous officers who wished to shield a murderer in petticoats.

I believe the commission's recommendation actually hurt Mary Surratt's chances of receiving a commutation from Andrew Johnson given his mentality and resentments against what used to be called "the better class of society."
Tom

[RJNorton]

Fascinating tidbit. If true,it makes Johnson's subsequent statements about being deceived by Holt about the mercy recommendation by the Commission more untenable.

I agree. If the recommendation for mercy were discussed in a Cabinet meeting how could Johnson deny knowledge of it?

James Harlan, the Secretary of the Interior in 1865, in a letter dated May 23, 1875, remembered a Cabinet meeting just after the conspiracy trial at which clemency for Mary Surratt was discussed. Harlan noted the words of Edwin Stanton to Andrew Johnson:

"Surely not, Mr. President, for if the death penalty should be commuted in so grave a case as the assassination of the head of a great nation, on account of the sex of the criminal, it would amount to an invitation to assassins hereafter to employ women as their instruments, under the belief that if arrested and condemned, they would be punished less severely than men. An act of executive clemency on such a plea would be disapproved by the Government of every civilized nation on earth."

[Eva Elisabeth]

I wonder why he didn't simply argue the way Stanton did as this is most logical and comprehensible?

[Gene C]

Johnson didn't have the education, even the self taught education, that Lincoln and Stanton had. Especially in legal matters.
He certainly didn't have the people skills Lincoln had.

His behavior on Lincoln's second inauguration, for whatever reasons, gave many people a bad impression of him.

[STS Lincolnite]

Fascinating tidbit. If true,it makes Johnson's subsequent statements about being deceived by Holt about the mercy recommendation by the Commission more untenable.

I agree. If the recommendation for mercy were discussed in a Cabinet meeting how could Johnson deny knowledge of it?

James Harlan, the Secretary of the Interior in 1865, in a letter dated May 23, 1875, remembered a Cabinet meeting just after the conspiracy trial at which clemency for Mary Surratt was discussed. Harlan noted the words of Edwin Stanton to Andrew Johnson:

"Surely not, Mr. President, for if the death penalty should be commuted in so grave a case as the assassination of the head of a great nation, on account of the sex of the criminal, it would amount to an invitation to assassins hereafter to employ women as their instruments, under the belief that if arrested and condemned, they would be punished less severely than men. An act of executive clemency on such a plea would be disapproved by the Government of every civilized nation on earth."

Did they discuss the general idea of clemency/sentence reductions for Mrs. Surratt (and perhaps others) or did they discuss the actual written recommendation for clemency for Mrs. Surratt from the commissioners? This might be a minor difference but I think important. To generally discuss what sentences were recommended and pros and cons is one thing, but to have actually have discussed the written recommendation from the commissioners would definitely show that Johnson lied. He said he never knew of the commissioner's recommendation for clemency prior to the execution.

I agree with Eva. This reported opinion of Stanton is very rationale. Whether or not one agrees with it, it certainly bears consideration. If it was given as such, Johnson would have been wise to have re-stated it when questions arose. Of course, as Gene alluded to, Johnson being wise would have been too much to ask for.

Someone please refresh my memory. Wasn't there someone (on Holt's staff?) who later committed suicide? I seem to remember it has been hypothesized that it was he who actually held the written recommendation back from Johnson and it was his guilt that led him to commit suicide.

[Thomas Thorne]

As president,Andrew Johnson did not need Joseph Holt's approval to commute a capital sentence. No execution warrant could be carried out without his signature. The Victorian public morality which condemned Mary Surratt's execution expressed after the fact lay dormant before her death. The public believed in her guilt but I believe did not seriously contemplate that the US government would for the first time execute a woman.

That Andrew Johnson did not share the prevailing ethos of society is obvious. What is striking is both the casual brutality of his sentiments "the trouble with this war is there aren't enough women being hanged'' and his failure to explain in detail to the public before the execution why he deemed it necessary in this particular case to defy the existing popular sentiment.
Tom

[Eva Elisabeth]

Someone please refresh my memory. Wasn't there someone (on Holt's staff?) who later committed suicide? I seem to remember it has been hypothesized that it was he who actually held the written recommendation back from Johnson and it was his guilt that led him to commit suicide.

Ex-Senator Preston King, who prevented Anna Surratt from asking President Johnson, did, by jumping from a Hudson River ferry boat with a bag of bullets tied to his neck.
http://www.mrlincolnandnewyork.org/insid...ubjectID=3

Wiki reads: "Despairing of success (in eliminating corruption in the Port of New York), King committed suicide..." (The "bag of bullets" is from Wiki, too.)

I am sure I read (more) about this in a book (not that long ago), too, but cannot find where.

[Gene C]

Let me second what Eva wrote above. Charles Bauer wrote a book called "The Odd Couple Who Hanged Mary Surratt", which addresses some of the involvement of the Senator Jim Lane of Kansa and Preston King of NY.

Book review and discussion
http://rogerjnorton.com/LincolnDiscussio...-1986.html

[STS Lincolnite]

Thanks Eva and Gene! Preston King is who I was thinking of.

[RJNorton]

Did they discuss the general idea of clemency/sentence reductions for Mrs. Surratt (and perhaps others) or did they discuss the actual written recommendation for clemency for Mrs. Surratt from the commissioners? This might be a minor difference but I think important. To generally discuss what sentences were recommended and pros and cons is one thing, but to have actually have discussed the written recommendation from the commissioners would definitely show that Johnson lied. He said he never knew of the commissioner's recommendation for clemency prior to the execution.

Scott, I agree with you. You make an excellent point. It's hard to tell for certain based on the way Harlan worded things. As far as I can tell only one other Cabinet member spoke/wrote about the meeting, but he didn't feel right discussing specifically what was said in Cabinet meetings. This man was James Speed. Speed wrote Holt on March 30, 1873:

"After the finding of the military commission that tried the assassins of Mr. Lincoln, and before their execution, I saw the record of the case in the President's office, and attached to it was a paper, signed by some of the members of the commission, recommending that the sentence against Mrs. Surratt be commuted to imprisonment for life; and, according to my memory, the recommendation was made because of her sex. I do not feel at liberty to speak of what was said at Cabinet meetings. In this I know I differ from other gentlemen, but feel constrained to follow my own sense of propriety."

[STS Lincolnite]

Did they discuss the general idea of clemency/sentence reductions for Mrs. Surratt (and perhaps others) or did they discuss the actual written recommendation for clemency for Mrs. Surratt from the commissioners? This might be a minor difference but I think important. To generally discuss what sentences were recommended and pros and cons is one thing, but to have actually have discussed the written recommendation from the commissioners would definitely show that Johnson lied. He said he never knew of the commissioner's recommendation for clemency prior to the execution.

Scott, I agree with you. You make an excellent point. It's hard to tell for certain based on the way Harlan worded things. As far as I can tell only one other Cabinet member spoke/wrote about the meeting, but he didn't feel right discussing specifically what was said in Cabinet meetings. This man was James Speed. Speed wrote Holt on March 30, 1873:

"After the finding of the military commission that tried the assassins of Mr. Lincoln, and before their execution, I saw the record of the case in the President's office, and attached to it was a paper, signed by some of the members of the commission, recommending that the sentence against Mrs. Surratt be commuted to imprisonment for life; and, according to my memory, the recommendation was made because of her sex. I do not feel at liberty to speak of what was said at Cabinet meetings. In this I know I differ from other gentlemen, but feel constrained to follow my own sense of propriety."

Thanks Roger. From this, I get the impression that Speed felt Johnson did know about the commissioner's recommendations for clemency for Mrs. Surratt prior to the execution. Of course, again, it is not stated overtly. He saw the document "in the President's office". So I suppose someone in the President's office could have removed the attached paper before Johnson saw it. But that would beg the question why Speed would see a document in the President's office before the President would.

I was looking through Welles' diary and he makes no reference to this discussion at a cabinet meeting. In fact I could find no reference to the final decision of the commissioners or the execution itself. This is baffling to me as he did mention earlier in his diary his discomfort with the decision to try by military commission vs. civilian court. Of course the version I was reading was the 1911 version which was notoriously edited and re-edited by Welles and his son prior to publication. The most recent (and excellent, I might add) version published in 2014 ends in April 1865 so doesn't get to the period of the conspirator's trial.

Roger, can you give more context on the letter Speed wrote to Holt? Was Holt trying to vindicate himself (as to his claim that he did in fact give Johnson the written recommendation - which Johnson denied) by trying to find someone who would corroborate that Johnson had received and seen the recommendation?

[RJNorton]

Was Holt trying to vindicate himself (as to his claim that he did in fact give Johnson the written recommendation - which Johnson denied) by trying to find someone who would corroborate that Johnson had received and seen the recommendation?

Scott, I think this is definitely the case. In The Papers of Andrew Johnson editor Paul H. Bergeron includes a note which says, "Ten years later Holt continued to harass Speed to reveal whatever had been said at the cabinet meeting, but Speed refused to do so."

https://books.google.com/books?id=JM5fCw...22&f=false

[Eva Elisabeth]

I would like to learn forum members' opinions - whether Johnson knew or not, should the plea have been granted and why, or was it right to carry the verdict figuratively and in reality into execution (and why)?

Thanks for your input!

[RJNorton]

Eva, IMO Johnson firmly believed Mary Surratt "kept the nest that hatched the egg." I think his mind was made up on her, clemency plea or not. Also, IMO, I feel the weight of the evidence shows that Johnson knew about the clemency plea and chose to ignore it.